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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to receptacle devices used to heat fluid bearing containers. More specifically, this invention relates to a novel receptacle-type heating device for warming baby bottles containing breast milk in a quick, reliable, and automated manner.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, devices for warming fluid containers have been used extensively in the prior art. Until now, however, there have been no such devices suitable for use in warming baby bottles in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) of a hospital. NICU are responsible, among many other things, for administering substrate, formula, or breast milk to newborn infants. Recent medical studies reinforce the fact that newborns benefit significantly from receiving colostrumxe2x80x94the first milk of the mother after giving birth. Colostrum is known to supply extremely high concentrations of antibodies essential to the development of a newborn""s immune system, and is also thought to aid in establishing digestion of the newborn. Accordingly, it is absolutely critical to capture the colostrum from the mother and carefully preserve it for later administration to the newborn as quickly, cleanly, and safely as possible.
In current practice, NICU nurses capture breast milk from the mother in baby bottles, refrigerate or freeze the breast milk, rewarm the breast milk, and feed it to the newborn. Newborns tend to feed about eight times per day, which necessitates frequent thawing, warming, and administering of breast milk. This frequent and time consuming process wastes an enormous amount of time for the NICU nurses, especially due to the manually intensive method of thawing and warming the breast milk. Using a microwave to warm the breast milk is not a viable option since such a process has a detrimental effect on the quality of the breast milk.
Instead, the breast milk is thawed and warmed by placing the baby bottle into a large insulated cup full of hot tap water. Due to simple heat transfer principles, the hot water quickly cools down even before the breast milk has had a chance to thaw, much less warm up to body temperature. Therefore, NICU nurses must repeatedly add hot water to the insulated cup in order to thaw and warm the breast milk. As such, NICU nurses waste precious time maintaining an archaic warming process instead of attending to newborns. In the alternative, NICU nurses sometimes leave the insulated cup and baby bottle under a faucet of running hot water. Unfortunately, this approach works, for only one bottle at a time and, if left unattended, results in a temporary depletion of hot water supply or possibly overheated breast milk.
There are other problems with the insulated cup warming process. For one, since the method is entirely manual and subjective, it is possible that the temperature of the breast milk is inadequately warmed and is either too cold or too hot. Additionally, it is important that the bottle be shaken to agitate and properly mix the breast milk; however, because of the often hurried pace of an NICU and the manual nature of the warming process the baby bottles are not always adequately shaken. Finally, the current warming process results in a mess of half full insulated cups lying about on NICU counter tops that often times are inadvertently knocked over, creating an even bigger mess and an aura of untidiness.
The prior art has suggested use of heated bath immersion devices. For example, one complicated apparatus in effect accomplishes the same result as the insulated cup/running tap water process mentioned above. U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,435 to Fosco, Jr. teaches a bottle warmer that uses a thermal transfer fluid to heat a baby feeding bottle. Fosco, Jr. discloses a portable device having an open top cup-like container for holding hot water therein. A removable platform is positioned within the container for suspending a baby bottle inside the container in contact with the hot water. The removable platform separates the container into an upper and lower chamber. An open-ended tube extends from the top of the container down into the lower chamber for conveying incoming tap water thereto. Accordingly, the portable device is placed under a faucet dispensing running hot water such that the hot water is directed down into the open-ended tube. The hot water thus enters the lower chamber and is forced under pressure up around the sides of the suspended baby bottle and into the upper chamber until it exits via the open top of the container. Obviously, the Fosco, Jr. warmer provides an unnecessarily complex apparatus for bottle warming that, in effect, is substantially similar to the insulated cup method that NICU nurses currently use. Therefore, Fosco, Jr. does not address, much less solve, the above-mentioned problems. Furthermore, the background section of Fosco, Jr. discusses the shortcomings of several other receptacle-type devices that need not be further explored here.
Additionally, the prior art has suggested use of dry block heaters for heating test tubes. Dry block designs typically use metal blocks having a central or localized heating passage therethrough. A series of tube wells are typically arranged in a pattern within the metal block in close proximity to the heating passage. Heat flowing through the heating passage transfers through the block, into the tube wells, and into test tubes placed in the tube wells. This design has one significant drawback in particular. The tube wells are of a necessarily fixed diameter to accept a slightly undersized test tube, thereby establishing a close fitting relationship between the metal block and test tubes to enable effective heat transfer therebetween. Unfortunately, this configuration is not flexible enough to permit use of a variety of sizes of test tubes with a particular block. Therefore, only one size of test tube, or baby bottle, could be used with such a device. Since different NICU inevitably use bottles from different manufacturers that are of different sizes and shapes, this type of fixed block design is not practical for the purposes intended according to the present invention.
From the above, it can be appreciated that baby bottle warming methods and apparatus of the prior art are not fully optimized. Therefore, what is needed is an automatic bottle-heating device that quickly, accurately, individually, and simultaneously warms and vibrates a multitude of baby bottles so as to adequately heat and mix breast milk contained therein.
According to the preferred embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a device for warming and vibrating a multitude of baby bottles simultaneously in order to thaw, warm, and mix refrigerated breast milk in an expedient and accurate manner. The device heats each baby bottle to a desired temperature using heat exchange of water with the baby bottle. The device includes a heater block having several wells therein. Several removable reservoirs for receiving the water are disposed respectively within the wells of the heater block. Several heating elements are provided for heating the removable reservoirs and the water contained therein. The heating elements are disposed respectively between the removable reservoirs and the heater block within the wells of the heater block.
In operation, the device is plugged into a standard wall socket and is switched on with a master switch. Each heating element is individually activated by throwing its own dedicated switch. Current thereby flows from the wall socket to the heating element thus causing heat to emanate therefrom. The heat flows easily through each removable reservoir, through the water contained therein, through the baby bottle, and into the breast milk. Optionally, the heating device can be mounted atop a vibrator device that is used to agitate and mix the breast milk.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a heating device that when compared to using hot tap water, more quickly, cleanly, and accurately thaws and warms liquid inside of a container.
It is another object to provide a heating device that does not require use of hot tap water and that warms liquid inside of a container to a predetermined temperature without overheating the liquid.
It is still another object to provide a heating device that automatically agitates and mixes liquid inside of a container.
It is yet another object to provide a heating device that accommodates a range of sizes of containers to be heated.
It is a further object to provide a heating device that is capable of warming a multitude of containers individually and simultaneously.
It is still a further object to provide a heating device that accomplishes the above-mentioned objectives using a unique receptacle design configuration by incorporating certain features of well-known consumer household appliances such as heating elements of toaster ovens and thermostatic circuits of coffee makers.
It is yet a further object to provide a heating device for heating baby bottles, syringes, test tubes, and the like.
These objects and other features, aspects, and advantages of this invention will be more apparent after a reading of the following detailed description and appended claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.